http://www.fontichiaro.com/activelearning/2013/10/15/hbr-tactile-intelligence/
The more time our “digital native” kids spend on entertainment media, the more we lose the tactile intelligence critical to design and manufacture physical products.

The New Influence

Bruce Metcalf’s essay Craftsmanship in the Age of Hot Glue and Tape, edited and renamed Hot Glue and Staples for American Craft issue June / July 2014 irritates me.  I guess it has irritated many other folks as well, but I feel compelled to share some of my own thoughts.  I don't disagree with much of what he says about the importance of craftsmanship, but its a rather narrow perspective to have with consideration to the changing state of the object these days.  Metcalf is projecting his values based on his practice onto the entirety of art.  Doing so, he is perpetuating the classification of objects solely between art and craft.  His essay doesn’t include a perspective of the object beyond physicality, a world we have lived in for quite some time now.  The age of the internet has changed craft. 

Metcalf does highlight an important aspect of craftsmanship, the influence that practice has to change our minds, but fails to consider it in a much broader analysis.  Prolonged repetition does change neurological pathways, that is to say, how we think.  After twenty years of using the internet we are just beginning to catch up to the implications of this new information technology, this new medium.  With prolonged use, the internet has changed our minds.  Nicholas Carr, in his book The Shallows, proves that how we communicate, think, and create, have all been neurologically reformatted due to the internet.  After two decades of working within virtual systems, with virtual material if you will, how can I be expected to approach physical materials in traditional ways?  How can I think of objects by a purely physical description alone? How could I possibly approach them in the same way?  Furthermore, why would I want to? 

I believe that craftsmanship is on a sliding scale, a tool used incrementally from low to high, in order to support a makers intention.  I have witnessed two unspoken reactions to the internet over the past few years when it comes to object making in craft.  Very high craftsmanship, inciting an over fetishized product, both in form and nostalgia, and very low craftsmanship, creating haphazard, almost lackadaisical works which slightly refer to Process Art, but lack in the that movements intention.  The high end reaction feels stubborn, in denial of the technological change we are all going through, and the low end reaction is lost in the quagmire of infinite possibility, feeling half inspired and half defeated.  Given the overwhelming influence the internet has had on our notion of production, objects, and materials, I find it truly amazing that both camps are still making, with there hands, and with tangible substances.  It is a testament to our genetically formed relationship with all things tangible and the will of humanity.  Non-the-less, the notion of the object has been forever changed in the minds of all the internets users.  I do not believe sloppy craft exists.  The so called sloppy craft maker has purposely put that object into the public, opening it up for discussion. I have to at least meet the maker half way and believe that they choose that level of craftsmanship very intentionally.  Furthermore, I have to consider why they choose to do so, and by that I mean what context the maker producing from.  

I suspect that Metcalf is not so much upset with so called sloppy craft, as he is with wanting makers to have a sense of respect for material, with their work, and taking some pride in themselves.  I agree, but the classification of created objects must transcend the previous models of art, craft and design, and begin to include, in the very least, the awareness of virtual sensibilities.  Science fiction writer and design theorist Bruce Sterling helps to give some semblance to the virtual objects of the present and near future in his book Shaping Things.  The physical object, what he calls the artifact, is merely our first notion of the object, there are many more to come.  If form equals content, I suspect that there is a lot more understanding to be done and this can only happen with continued experimentation.
  

Metcalf calls for us to look through the surface of the object and into the meaning of it. I argue that lavish attention to an object completely hinders the disappearance of the surface and only reflects the makers technical ability.  This is not concept.  We need to think broader.  We can no longer rely on our previous definitions of what makes a good art or a good craft object.  To start, we all need to stop defining craft by material association and start defining it by the makers intention.  Even infinitely malleable clay has its limitations in use, which in turn creates limitations in practice and the associative maker’s identity.  Like the internet, intention has no bounds.  

Let us pretend for a moment, that craft, as a noun, has died.  It no longer exists.  Regardless of means of production, whether by hand or by machine, people will continue to produce objects, for there will always be an innate calling to do so, that is something we can always rely on.  Now, regardless of the inspirational source, utilitarian or not, people can now set there intention on only one aspect, whether an object is functional or is not.  There would be objects that are sculptures and there would be objects that are designs.  My point is, as makers we all side either one way or the other already, and that may change from day to day, but what I’m asking for is that makers get out of their own way and label the objects they make and not themselves.  Let intention drive form and thus content.

Playing out this thought experiment a little further, how would such an approach to material and making change how we think about craft?  Craft is reformed into a verb.  Craft becomes a means for sociology including, but not limited to, education, community awareness, sharing, empathy, thinking, and discussion. These craft qualities far exceed the stagnate limitations of the individual object.  

The influence of the internet places the maker in confusing territory, without a doubt, but that does not exclude us from trying to make sense of it.  Any reaction to a major paradigm shift, is a good reaction, it shows consideration and thoughtfulness, but if there is one thing I have learned from my considerations of the internet, is that it affirms that there is more than one approach to thinking about things and that includes objects.  The possibilities of a thing are endless, embrace them all, and let them influence what you love to do.  You’ll make better work for doing so.  

In the year 2013

How do we know we exist today?

What evidence reflects this awareness?

Do we still gain knowledge through physical experiences, through tactile interpretations and bodily acts?

Is knowledge merely the outcome of research?

What does this information look like?

Does physical information have the same relevance today as it once had?

Is material evidence still important? Is it even necessary?  

Has documentation replaced our artifacts of effort?

What is the outcome of labor?

What is the purpose of intention without physical evidence?

Is art merely the refuse of the making act? 

Are there substances to resist to in virtual realms? 

What can be learned form those types of resistances?

What materials can genuinely record my interpretations? My questions? My curiosities?

Can I trust them? 

What continues to compel me to leave pieces of myself behind?

Object Changer

This short SF novel changed how I think about objects, craft, craftsmanship, and technology.  The general mechanic in the story is that in an alternate reality there is no technology that improves the quality of things, but rather the effect of using objects makes things better.  Though use, objects evolve, become better tools, and become more luxurious.  As a maker of objects, keeping this concept in mind in this reality, has radically changed my intention for making a "new" thing at the onset of its making.  Thank you David Brin.

“My interest in technology is in its relationship with culture and its effects on society, and in many cases that can be communicated in things other than code.” (O'Dwyer 2012: 7)

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/dec/6/whats-really-specific-about-new-media-art-curating/

"The Future-Present is a series of weak signals, gut reactions, and uncanny fascinations, laid out into sketches and short blurbs, printed on an esoteric deck of cards."

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/jul/12/guide-future-present-archetypes-part-1-spark/

‎"Retro physible hackers will take up woodworking, just to “make something real”.

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/mar/8/shape-shaping-things-come/

The Return from a Fantastic Place

I entered the virtual space as an object maker, recognizing Sketch Up as a sculptor might recognize a chisel as it is in the context of a great hunk of marble challenging him to carve out of it some thing greater, if not beaconing a worth while pursuit of time.  The virtual space confronted my notion of material, my tactile self in knowing and understanding my self as a person who processes life and the world through expressions of the hand.  Physical material slowed me down, gave me time to contemplate my emotions, stresses, and intellectual curiosities.  Virtual space and the material it is composed of, was shockingly immediate; it was altogether uncomfortable.  I persisted though, and spent a vast amount of time there, adapting by producing many digital things.  Indeed, I spent more time in that universe of virtual material, than I did in my initial world of physical material wrought with all its resistances.  Only the intermittent realms of dreams interrupted my waking hours in this new virtual space, which probably only exacerbated my temporal confusion.  

Still, and once again as it is a truism in my life, this new virtual environment needed processing, and after a days journey through virtual space, I still had to process my findings physically.  I continued to make with my hands in my medium of choice since very early childhood, clay.  The great amorphous philosophers stone if there ever was one, again only adding to the chasms and endless tunnels of my elastic mind.  It appeared for a long time that every thing I once relied upon to keep sane was only compounding my sinking into the fortuitous and proverbial rabbit hole.  Working in clay, which was once a stronghold in my psyche was now equally queer as the virtual worlds I was inhabiting by day as well as the dreams I was having during sleep.  Nothing made sense anymore, and yet I persisted as the good student I was and as I only know how to do, on masochistic levels, hopelessly addicted to the nothingness.  

One day, while crafting some new digital object, free from the confining notions of entropy and gravity, I had what addicts can an epiphany.  The digital material I was working with created both form as well as space.  In physical reality, on earth, we have air as space, only defined by the ground and the objects protruding from it or resting on it, in what ever substances they may be occurring in, of natural materials or human made ones.  In virtual space there is no preexisting air.  All that is seen on the computer screen is code, ones and zeros.  In order to define the simulacra of digital things, all must be programmed.  This premonition gave way to my understanding of context as it is defined and in relationship to form, in a very formal way.  As an object maker, my idea of physical context has always been taken for granted, except perhaps when considering the display of said object or sculpture.  

It has been a while since I have visited the virtual space of Sketch Up, about two years.  Sure, I may dabble here and there, but I am grounded once again in the physical, it seems more important to me.  But I am still left with questions.  For instance, if it takes physical knowledge to create virtual spaces, for both visiting and creating, then can the opposite be true?  Can the virtual influence the physical?  What is happening now, in my head and in my studio is, I am making things by hand as they have been influenced by virtual means and experiences.  I am using tools such as Push/Pull and Rotate from Sketch Up in my mind in order to create physical objects in clay.  My studio is now more than a sum of equipment, it is in my mind as well as my hands now.

I am still an object maker, but these new objects are strange as if created by a foreign self who I’m still getting to know.  Considering clays origins, the buried earth, in conjunction with the context / form relationship in Sketch Up, that of each thing being created of the same coded material, blurring the lines of distinction and distinction-ability, I feel my self finding common treads in the land and the landscape.  Both made of small things like rocks and trees, and at the same time vastly expansive as far as the eye can see and the feet are willing to traverse.  As infinite as a virtual plane and also composed of the same unifying material.  In a way, my current practice has come full circle, the last major intellectual journey having taken during my undergraduate studies, where I returned processed clay of various mixed powders to the earth to do with it what it may through a series of different weather and climate conditions.  Accepting the larger and uncontrollable forces as they come; what ever the outcome may be, clay can adapt. 

The objects have become contexts or fragments or ideas of contexts, which is a very odd thing to think about, distinguishing intention from interpretation.  But, that is how I felt during my virtual journeys, each foot in two different worlds at the same time, not alive and not quite dead.  In the physical world, I felt as if I was just going through the motions, a sort of muscle memory reaction to life and the things going on around me.  Like knowing where the light switches are in the dark but not using them because I knew they now longer worked.  In the virtual realm, every moment was wrought with tense short bursts of excitement that never amounted to any one memorable experience of pleasure, a steady drip of morphine, one drop at a time just sustaining me until the next, always under the guise that the next click will be the click of something great.  But nothing there amounted to anything, or I should say any actual object.  How does a sculptor conceive of this?

These feeling of loss of self and detachment have began another line of work that is intertwined with the loss of making by hand.  When working with digital material, it seems odd, almost futile to go back into the clay studio and get dirty.  The medium, as all physical materials do, has its limitations, quite unlike virtual material.  Furthermore, and from another perspective, I thought a long time about excess.  I would ask myself questions that challenged my making beyond mere compulsory habits.  Such as, do I really need to make another ceramic cup?  For that matter, with the ease of digital technology at our fingertips, three-dimensional printers, and factories, do I really need to make by hand, a coffee mug?  Won’t it become yet another coffee mug to add to the heaps at Goodwill later?  Does yet another coffee mug need to be made at all, by anyone?  Some would say yes, as a defiant gesture of the hand made.  As an act which defines humans from all other things, in meaning, imagination, and identity.  For those qualities of humans, I agree, they are vastly important to uphold and have daily reminders of, but the time of designed trinkets are over.  They, in the context of virtual communication and connections, like morphine drips themselves, are outmoded.  If you believe other wise, stay in the Shire.

My point here is that for my own practice, making by hand, and all the functions those objects hold themselves to answer, is being replaced by virtual things.  At times I feel very sad by this and at other times it makes the most sense logically and I think it may actually help our overly commercial and materialistic society.  But at what cost, is always the opposing thought in my head.  It is in my nature to flip-flop over issues and this subject matter will not change that fact about me.  As our lives become more and more entangled with virtual experiences, my feelings of the loss of human identity, as making physically has sustained and formed our minds since our beginning, has also become a major theme in my practice.  This feeling is nothing new when seen in reaction to new growing technologies, just look at all the hoopla over industrialization.  Our current neo-craft movement is nothing more than a reaction to virtual technology, just as folks were reacting to machines making objects instead of us and our all import souls.  Both reactions are about loosing touch with the ways of life and how we as humans have always understood it, by manipulating the earths material with our hands.  Life is a processing of natural materials, or I should say it was.  

So what we have here is death on an exponentially rising incline.  Not the death of humans per ‘se, instead a very old and identifiable human identity.  The pinch pot holds more information in our being than it does the liquid it was mean to contain.  Now we cast is away.  The new world is untouchable, not worth fixing, and quickly replaceable.  

As per usual, I have about two or three main bodies of working going at all times, usually each contradicting the other, or each merely presenting the two sides of the same coin, as if coins naturally stood on their edges, as a sculpture would be seen on all sides at all times.  The last few paragraphs explaining the loss of human identity is the first.  The other body of work is about fantastic new perceptions of what is possible, embracing the qualities of virtual spaces and digital materials, accepting their influences by finding similarities between them and the unseeable and expansive preexisting earth.    It is a hybrid living that is mature, simple and constant.  I feel this understanding is broad in scope, which reassures me.  This series calms me and gives solid weight and grounding to me and I feel that it is moving beyond my initial hang ups and gut reactions to digital technologies, alas it must be made though.

Material Interest

I am interested in the dynamic between interpretation and intention during the act of making with clay, a medium that inherently possess parallel states of being as it changes from soft and malleable to hard and permanent.  I find these active moments in making similar to the process of experimentation, creating a push and pull tension between the desires of play and control.  

I like swishing clay with my fingers and hands.  With little effort or refinement, the impressions of my curiosities are recorded instantly.  Due to the amorphous nature of clay, human identity is at once set and challenged during the same moment in time, urging constant reevaluations of self as it exists within fluctuation.    

My interest in making, and not things to be made, gives suggestion that its end products   can be understood as evidences or artifacts.  It is the firing process that instills the making act with meaning, holding it in place, slowing down the experience, nearly stopping time completely.  These petrified moments are possibilities in form, alluding to the meaning of material and its connections to our consciousness. 

Craft / Craftsmanship

(Having recently re-watched Sloppy Craft, a public conversation hosted by The Museum of Contemporary Craft, at PNCA, Fall 2009), I believe much confusion on the topic of craft is based on conversations which confuse the place holder of certain things with the notion of skill for intention.
The latter, Craftsmanship, in my opinion, is a sliding scale of quality based on a makers intention and/or concept; do with it as you would or need to do, for the sake of the viewer / user of that thing you are making.
Craft on the other hand, is two things.  One, a wonderfully confusing, frustrating, and convoluted catch-all of issues, topics, and objects that have double, if not unlimited, meanings as those things mean so much to us as a species. Due to which, and my second belief, Craft is the origin of all humanly constructed things, parenting Art as well as Design, because it was and continues to be the defining moment of our very existence in survival and intelligence.  Craft is simply the manipulation of natural materials for our perceived betterment, and indeed survival and intelligence are important, but furthermore, as we work with and change materials, we become attached to them on many levels, making Craft emotional.
When opening discussions about Craft, as in new perceptions of form or considering intentions in concept by challenging traditional techniques, I think it would be thoughtful to consider one's statements either in the realm of Craft or Craftsmanship.  Not doing so, as I have seen in this lecture, as well as having participated in many academically based critiques and conversations, sets any discussion of Craft on a confusing path, which becomes quickly heated and subject to ominously broad quagmires of tangental topics and passionate interjections.  As a participant in such discussions, after some time has gone by, I have always felt like I was watching a Great Dane chase its own tale until it has exhasted its self.
Such is the arena of public lectures, but discussing Craft is sticky enough already, I think that by stating distinctive guidelines between Craft and Craftsmanship could ease the tension and hopefully lead to greater insights.